Studio: international art (85.1923)

STAINED GLASS BY REGINALD BELL

ST. GEORGE." STAINED GLASS
PANEL IN STAIRCASE WINDOW
AT 21 OLD BURLINGTON STREET
LONDON. BY REGINALD BELL

STAINED GLASS BY REGINALD
BELL. 00000

THE saying that all things move in
cycles is strangely exemplified at the
present time by the state of affairs in the
handicraft of painting and staining upon
glass, for a remarkably complete parallel
may be drawn between this post-war period
and its conditions and the middle of the 14th
century. Then, as now, this country was
recovering from war—and that a war fought
over the very ground on which British
troops were fighting not five years ago.
Again and again in Froissart's Chronicle
190

the same place names leap to the eye as
were so familiar in the daily press of 1918—
Corbie, Amiens, St. Quentin and the rest.
Again the country is recovering from post-
war pestilence—for the influenza of 1918
probably claimed nearly as many victims as
the Black Death of 1348—and now, as
then, English glass-painters find them-
selves in the middle of a re-birth of their
handicraft. Never in all its history did
stained glass make such strides as in the
years between 1340 and 1380. In that short
period more changes took place in the tech-
nique and design of windows than in the
four centuries which preceded it or the